Apple Updates Siri to Give Humorous Responses to 'Okay Glass' Prompt

Siri is now giving snarky responses to users who give the attention signal used by Google Glass users, 'Okay Glass'. This is not the first time users have noticed Siri giving special responses to queries.

Apple also posted a job listing in the January looking for writers to enhance Siri's wit and personality.

Siri responds to 'Okay Glass' with a number of different responses:

Just so you know, I don't do anything when you blink at me.

Stop trying to strap me to your forehead. It won't work.

I think that glass is half empty.

I'm not Glass. And I'm just fine with that.

Very funny. I mean, not funny "ha-ha," but funny.

Glass? I think you've got the wrong assistant.

Siri's speech generator is receiving a significant update in iOS 7, gaining a "clearer, more natural-sounding female or male voice" as well as access to more data sources. It will also be able to control more phone functions like turning Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on and off.

Humorous responses like this is what humanizes Siri so we relate to it better. It's supposed to be a proto-AI. If it was just an unfeeling computer, we wouldn't form the bond, and thus take it for granted, be unwilling to forgive its mistakes, and not trust it. Siri being a "person" with personality smoothes the rough edges and amuses us, making for a friendlier, more comfortable user experience.

Apple wants us to have a relationship with our devices, and our devices to have a relationship with us. For Apple, it's all about the interface and how it responds to user input. Siri is just the latest example of that, and they'll keep working on it to make it better. Siri will learn and grow, and become more capable, and yes, more human. That's the whole idea. I guarantee you, human interface engineers sat around in a room somewhere and talked about the psychology of interacting with a computerized personal assistant.

While I'm sure little jokes like this aren't costing Apple loads of time and money, I'm certain that to Apple, they are indeed a priority. This is Apple we're talking about. Interface is often more important than actual functionality. If you haven't figured that out by now, I don't know what to tell you.

But, the people writing the code are not the people writing the scripts. You don't need to worry about that. Siri works great for me, with my good diction and neutral american accent. I use Siri all the time, but I know for some people, Siri isn't as understanding of what you're saying. To be fair, though, I can't always understand what you're saying either. If you have an accent, or you mumble, or you shout from across the room, or have a thick case blocking up the mic, you're going to have issues and it's not exactly Siri's fault. There are engineers working on that problem, though, not to worry. Contextual clues will help some, but ultimately people misunderstand each other when they're talking, all the time, so why should a computer be any better? The sound waves coming into all of our ears are imperfectly sent to begin with due to voice and pronunciation variation, but then our brains interpret and compare those sounds based on other sounds we've heard in the past, and make a best-guess approximation of their meaning. Sometimes our brains, as fantastic pattern-recognition systems as they are, get it wrong. It happens to you every day, but you quickly compensate, ask for something to be repeated, or make an assumption. It's a noisy and confusing world out there and Apple's (or anybody's) engineers are only going to get it so good. If you're expecting to have results better than what our specifically evolved neural language processing centers can do, you're expecting science fiction. That said, if you speak clearly, and don't have an accent where a lot of words sound the same, Siri is pretty darn good, far better than I thought it would be, and I find that if anything, it's gotten better.

except, not really. im sure the system is readily configurable...set up a few key words, done.

but nice try at hating. im sure you could find something else to pick at if you try.

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Agreed. People are so easily amused.

the two have nothing to do with each other.

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Siri is the useless feature we all knew we didn't need. To each their own.

indeed -- i find Siri quite useful in fact, there is no other way id rather create a new appointment in my calendar, or for setting reminders. short keyword-driven stuff like that work really well, which is also why i keep one-handed texting brief. works well, especially in my Siri Eyes Free-equipped car

How about improving Siri's language/accent recognition abilities and intelligence rather than such silly playful things?

I hardly think the engineering team wrote these snarky responses, so how were they wasting their time? I'm sure they're working on improving Siri, but that takes a lot longer than writing witty prompts.

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